


April snow

by hauntedpoem



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Abuse, M/M, Prostitution, Racism, Slash, Slavery, dark gondolin, dub con, gaudy echtelion, maeglin's way of paying turgon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 03:25:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10688793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem
Summary: Maeglin: favour for favour.Glorfindel: pleasure for pain.





	April snow

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the weather and Encairion's amazing saga, The price of vengeance. this story takes where I left off in "Black sheep of Gondolin" but can be read independently.  
> I try to write a little every day and push myself a bit.  
> -  
> slash and pea stew.

It's mostly during the night when he has the brunt of the work to face. Glorfindel locks himself in the small room that serves as his study and studies maps and military reports by the candlelight. They patrol day and night the borders, each Lord of each house having a sector to protect besides the gates.

  
He kept telling his king that it's only a matter of time before they are discovered but the king insists that those who venture too far and spread the secret of their location pose the actual risk.  
Glorfindel of the house of the Golden Flower is unfettered. The king is unrealistic in this and soon, the displeasure of their mixed population will get to him.  
Turgon isolates himself in his ivory tower. Literally, because everything in Gondolin is made of white marble. It is enough for him to hear bad news and get in a mood. The king sulks, as unkingly as that is.

  
Glorfindel has barely time to clean his desk up when he sees it in the flash of light from the street lamp. Snow. Tiny frigid flecks of white, disappearing immediately as they touch the ground.  
White on white.  
He lingers until the chill caresses the tips of his ears. The window lies open wide to let the wind brush off the smell of sequestered scrolls and inks.  
Far in the distance, Glorfindel sees the spires of the theater house, the dark of the roofs eaten away by cold white. Glorfindel doesn't think. He's as happy as a child, in Valinor snow was reserved only for northern areas and they had enough of that while crossing Helcaraxe. Here, the snow and bad weather are rare occasions, the valley surrounded by high mountains and tall forests, resembling a hidden sparkling gem. No one leaves. No one leaves Gondolin, and why would they want to? It's beautiful here.  
It's beautiful unless you get to know the depths of it. The sadness, the claustrophobia, the neverending and blinding white, the rationing of food and goods, the treatments of the Avari. Worse was the constant fear that a stray orc may peek over the cliffs and see Gondolin. The fear is always there. They will be unprepared if it comes.  
Against the white, he notices it, a shadow gliding down the stairs of the palace. Maeglin.

  
Glorfindel continued watching enchantedly how he emerged into the snow-reflected light like a shard of obsidian.Gondolin was drenched in the cold light of high-hanging lamps- a pale and disastrous imitation of the light of Telperyon. Maeglin's steps were hurried on the steep, impractical steps of the front entrance. Sometimes, Glorfindel thought that their king chose this exact design to torment his councilors. Sometimes, he knew this was a fact but he also knew that in order to survive in this birdcage with its strict, discriminatory and racist rules, you had to deny the worst until you couldn't do it anymore. Elves are known for their resilience. 

Maeglin always walks fast as if the light shall consume him, be it day or night. He's in a hurry, running from light itself. He's agile and supple unlike the Noldor here, who've grown tall and strong, like blocks of granite. Glorfindel understands why he's looked upon with unnamable suspicion: Maeglin is too much like the old-time Avari whom the Noldor named their enemy without getting to know them. They feared what they did not understand. They destroyed what would not be conquered, what would not bow to their swords and their threats. To his shame, they weren't much different from the orcs and goblins and their strange machines, piercing the belly of Arda and poisoning her rivers.

Glorfindel could not do anything about that. He tried escaping and the eagles would have dropped him down like they threw Eol off a cliff. He could have become mush on the steep and scraggly stones. He was a cog in the machine and from this perspective, they were no different than the orcs and the Dark Foe.

Weary, he closed the window and extinguished the candles. His cape, pale blue, embroidered with the Golden Flower that was the seal of his house. The great clock in the central square tracked time, a neverending circle in their lives. immortality in a cage, just prolonged the suffering, it dragged it out like a disease without the relief of an end. It must have been sometimes past midnight. He tracked the footprints in the layer of snow and followed, across cobblestone streets and cramped Avarin neighborhoods. Maeglin lived far from the center of Gondolin but he never complained of the distance or the troublesome stairs, even though through his status he could live in the palace, and he did that for a time but soon, things started changing between him and their king and Maeglin left for another place to establish a guild of smiths that would rival the hammer of wrath.

his elves were the unwanted, the despised, the unreliable, they were the puss that manifested from the wound that was Gondolin. An abomination, Glorfindel thought, yet he sore fealty to serve her cold heart for eternity.

He entered the same tavern as Maeglin and took his cloak off. Unlike any other place, this one swarmed with the poor, the despised and the unwanted. The dregs of Gondolin's society who in its search for purity forgot those whose backs she'd broken in order to rise from stone. They were the workers, the builders, the orphans, most of them Avari- Green elves, Sylvan, some Sindar, the Noldor who grew upset with Gondolin's ways. They were few Noldor, though. 

Most of them were mixed, something that was looked upon with distaste by the rich and powerful- mostly Noldor. They even discussed a tax for those who betrayed their origin by marrying into Moriquendi families. Here, the women had the same stature as the men. They worked as hard and reaped as much. It was this equality that frightened the lords and ladies of the Noldor. Women in breeches frightened some of the robe-wearing lords just as much as a band of goblins freshly emerged from the heart of the mountain.

He could see Maeglin in the far back of the room, or rather his shadow. He stood hunched over a bowl of stew, alone. But here, in this part of Gondolin, he did not stand out like a sore thumb as it often happened in council meetings or whenever Turgon decided to pick on him for the shortcomings of his guild and soldiers.

Glorfindel approached his table bearing two mugs of ale and a hopeful smile. Maeglin ate as daintily as one could with a wooden spoon from earthenware and it never occurred to Glorfindel that one like him, a lord in the kingdom of Turgon could look so famished. That happened only in the poverty-stricken quarters, where rations were not a priority for the councilors and lords whose only preoccupation was to adorn with more gems and precious metals their armor and their weapons. It reminded him of Echtelion, whose gaudy war gear made most of them frown.

Just as his coat of arms was nothing but a black background, Maeglin's distaste of jewels transpired to his men. They bore simple yet practical weapons. They dressed in garb that could pass as camouflage and had no special features. The funds from the armory were usually depleted by the likes of Salgant, Echtelion or Egalmoth.

Maeglin's back tensed and he held the spoon still, as one would a weapon, until Glorfindel seated himself facing him. he placed the mugs amiably in the center of the table, sweeping crumbs and leftovers from the previous patrons.

Maeglin's eyes sparked with a glint of distress as they usually did whenever Glorfindel lingered in his presence. He was always guarded but most with Glorfindel. He relinquished the spoon and it dropped noiselessly in the soft mush. Glorfindel's eyes latched on the red swirl of paprika and herbs, sometimes drifting to Maeglin's nervous fingers.

Long, pale fingers with traces of scratches, bruises, and burns. His house was one of miners and smiths, their hands betrayed them. He'd seen the same used and abused texture on Rog's hands during their practice. They were strong men, the Noldor who comprised his troops, yet some had been twisted by torture and scarcity, just like everybody else. 

Around him, Maeglin was usually defensive. "Did you come to gloat?" were his last words several weeks ago and Glorfindel was left in shock by the bile with which they have been spoken. Some of Maeglin's men suffered accidents in the mines and as a reprimand, Turgon took all their treasure and locked it away, probably to give it to Echtelion to add more embellishments to his armor.

Echtelion was gaudy, and he parroted his robes and armor like a mummer on parade. It was well known the falling between Maeglin's somber house and Echtelion's but the king had the final say in all their spats and sometimes he sided with his nephew. Glorfindel did not want to imagine, he did not want to know what Maeglin traded for those favors. 

It was the same payment he willingly gave to bring food that would have otherwise been wasted in the king's kitchens and by the lord's picky palates. They would throw it to their dogs rather to the Avarin orphans who lived in squalor and misery and sold themselves for a slice of bread. When Maeglin turned his home into an orphanage bursting of sylvans and other 'dark elves' or the lords' unwanted bastards, he was mocked in council by the likes of Egalmoth, Penlod or Duilin. However, his house turned into something fierce and Maeglin representative of the discontent  Avarin population of Gondolin, brought them rations and clothes and ensured their living turned decent, so much that the dirty little secrets that the high lords kept, such as the frequenting of brothels and the buying of desperate flesh had to stop.

Instead, he whored himself to Turgon.

There it was, Glorfindel did not want to think about it. But now he did and his eyes, blue as the joyous sky on a spring, opened up to hold Maeglin's dire gaze. 

He knew. How could he not when Glorfindel watched him like a hawk and pushed for information about him everywhere he went? And he smirked a twisted, self-loathing grimace. 

"Are you pleased now?"

That's all he said and took the bowl and the ale and moved to another table and gave the food away to a work-weary wife. Glorfindel could see in her the former prostitute that Egalmoth bought time and again, and she lingered with a babe suckling greedily from her wasted bosom, waiting for her husband.

He did not look back, just exited the tavern, enshrouded in his black cape. Mole. Miner. Black and bruised hands. Idril would never understand him. She would never see beyond her disgust with appearances. She lived now in a  world of ermine furs and forget-me-not colored silks, with diamonds in her hair and twelve maidens at her beck and call. Would she ever believe the hungry, the bedridden, the abused? Glorfindel quenched the sentiment. He loved Maeglin and Maeglin loved another.

He drank his ale and left, watching the snow piling up on the same slabs of marble that the king held in his halls. Gondolin was a pretty birdcage, indeed.

It must have paid, Glorfindel thought, mind unleashed on thoughts of him, moaning for their king, their executioner, on command, opening his body up to his fucking, wearing his scent and his seed like an animal for breeding. It didn't disgust him anymore. He would have done the same if he had anything to barter with. When the need and desire would strike, he would welcome Echtelion. With him, Glorfindel could understand what Maeglin felt, every single time.

 

**Author's Note:**

> does this makes sense to you?  
> kudos and comments are love!


End file.
